Varieties of Opposition to Gender Equality in Europe

Mieke Verloo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138649613
• eBook ISBN: 9781317232919
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In contrast to the wealth of studies on progress towards gender equality, opposition to gender equality is rarely studied, which makes it difficult to understand the positive and negative dynamics of gender equality as a political project.

The first of its kind, this timely collection examines the potential and challenges of our current scholarship on understanding opposition to gender+ equality in Europe. Divided into three parts, Mieke Verloo and her team of international experts begin Varieties of Opposition to Gender Equality in Europe by theorizing the dynamics of opposition to gender equality policies in Europe. Part Two highlights oppositional actors (politicians, governments, citizens, policy makers, churches) and political arenas (parliament, courts, Internet), as well as different and opposing visions of gender+ equality. Part Three concludes with a framework for understanding oppositional dynamics on gender equality change.

Setting the agenda for future research, this book will be useful for students of gender and politics, social movements, European integration, and policy studies, as well as for high-level policymakers, students, and feminist activists alike. It will be an inspiration to thinkers and doers and to scholars and political actors.

Part 1

Conceptualizing Opposition and Oppositional Dynamics

1
Introduction

Dynamics of Opposition to Gender+ Equality in Europe

Mieke Verloo

Across Europe, examples of recent cases of opposition to gender+ equality are not hard to find. It can be direct, violent, and extremely visible, like when Swedish feminists receive online death threats (Sveland 2013; Strid this book) or like in France, where thousands demonstrated against “gender theory” and school programs tackling sex and gender stereotypes in 2014 (Borrillo 2015; Paternotte this book). It can be linked to the rise of the far right in Europe, as when the Sweden Democrats (one such party) strongly objected to the gender-conscious pedagogy adopted by public childcare facilities to help children handle, and reflect on, dualistic gender norms (Towns, Karlsson, and Eyre 2014). It can be ongoing, as is the case with Ireland’s abortion opposition (Kozlowska, Béland, and Lecours 2016; Qulity, Conlon, and Kennedy 2015). It can involve various types of actors, not just politicians and social-movement activists, but also bureaucrats and courts (Ahrens and Holzleithner in this book). At times opposition is also indirect and less visible, as in the case of successful UK shelters for victims of domestic violence being wiped out by outsourcing to non-expert commercial actors (Ishkanian 2014) or when regulations that impose gender mainstreaming in policymaking are set aside by those who are supposed to implement them (Ahrens 2017; Ahrens this book; Cavaghan 2017). Whatever the form, these varieties of opposition to gender+ equality in Europe are strongly linked to citizens’ attitudes towards gender and sexual equality (Spierings this book). As for the potential effects of this opposition, it matters tremendously how strong a country’s democratic institutions are and what power is in the hands of the respective allies and opponents of the feminist project (Verloo this book; Krizsán and Popa this book, Miškovska Kajevska this book).

Studying Opposition to Gender Equality in Europe

As strange as it may be, opposition to feminist politics and gender+ equality is a relatively new subject in the study of the rise and fall of gender+ equality policies in Europe. Yet the crucial role of opposition should come as no surprise, as feminism by definition started as a movement or a political project that challenged the status quo, which has led it to face fierce opposition since its very beginnings (when or wherever one pinpoints it). Though over time the political victories of feminism have been many, whether they concerned women’s right to education, political representation, or women making their own decisions about their body, sexuality, or sexual activity, no feminist victory has ever been complete or everlasting. Whether one looks at basic educational or political rights, economic or bodily autonomy, it is not hard to find countries in this 21st-century world where women’s access to society or gender equality is non-existent, extremely limited, or incomplete. This is because the political efforts and victories of feminism have never eliminated their opposition, nor have they rendered opposition to feminism powerless. Opposition to feminism even seems to be growing (Council of Europe 2016a; Grzebalska and Soós 2016).

So, while opposition to feminist politics and gender+ equality is not new at all, this book is part of a new and profoundly necessary surge of attention to opposition in research and in political analysis. Whether to better engage politically with ever more tenacious opposition movements or better understand their workings in a neoliberal networked society, we need to understand opposition to feminist politics and gender+ equality more profoundly. Scholarly, there is much to gain from studying counterforces to the political project of feminism. As a recent field of study, gender and politics (Dahlerup 2010) has made tremendous progress in understanding what the causes and consequences are of gender inequality in politics, but gender and politics scholarship also has several problems and challenges: it frequently suffers from a progress bias, often has a too formal understanding of politics and at times it is locked in issue specificity, lacks an intersectional focus on gender equality, and is still very fragmented and one-dimensional in character.

The scholarly ambition of this book, then, is to understand the political dynamics of the rise and fall of gender+ equality projects by focusing on the various configurations of oppositional activities in Europe; in short, to better understand the dynamics of gender+ equality change through its varieties of opposition. The focus is on Europe for two reasons: The first is Europe’s long and diverse history of engagement with feminism. The strength of its engagement is visible in the European Union’s reputation and track record as an innovator and promoter of gender+ equality against a background of ongoing actual gender+ inequalities across Europe (EIGE 2013; 2015). It also shows in the Council of Europe’s ongoing efforts to gender mainstream all its activities on democracy and human rights (Council of Europe 2016b). Yet even if both the European Union and the Council of Europe set standards to the member states’ legal and policy choices, the engagement with feminism and the meaning given to gender equality vary tremendously across European countries (Verloo 2007).

The second reason is related to the existing literature, which, though it has flagged the relevance of the context of feminist politics to its potential success or failure in principle, has so far left the specifically Western and European elements of this context undertheorized. The Eurocentric and Westerncentric nature of much of the scholarship has meant that these aspects of the context are taken for granted rather than articulated, described, and analyzed. While this is always problematic, it is particularly dangerous now that 21st-century Europe is facing an accumulation of new and old dangers. Of these, the decline of democracy, the transition back to illiberalism, and rising neoliberalism, neo-nationalism, and political violence in Europe are particularly in need of more attention.

Politically, this book thus wants to engage with the contemporary European developments and structural settings that underpin this current intensification of oppositional dynamics on feminist politics and gender+ equality, and will have key roles in the present and future strengthening of such oppositions. To understand these dynamics, it is important to focus on the interaction between structure and agency. Oppositional activities develop in the structural settings of interdependent domains such as polity, economy, violence, civil society, education, and sexuality. The current background against which the oppositional dynamics play out in the context of Europe shows a complex configuration of changing structural elements: a worrying decline of democracy; a reduction in government power; an increased marketization of politics and public services; a serious reduction of the political space for civil society; intensifying political hierarchies and polarizations; growing political surveillance and violence; strengthened academic capitalism; ongoing gender-based violence; and renewed attempts at controlling and restricting sexual and bodily autonomy. These structural changes not only present bureaucratic gatekeepers that have always been hesitant to embrace gender equality with more opportunities to block or hinder gender-equality progress, but they also open up many new avenues for opposition, facilitating the emergence or intensification of the activities of two sets of actors in particular: actors that are linked to far-right, extreme right, or populist radical right parties and movements, and actors that are linked to organized (and especially centralized) religions. Both sets of actors have recently created larger political spaces for themselves in Europe, although their actual political engagement and power differ across countries. More classic groups of actors that are active in politics in Europe such as employers and trade unions can also still be found frustrating and blocking attempts to advance gender+ equality.

With this book, we intend to address questions such as: What facilitates, fosters, hinders, generates, or eliminates opposition? Which feminism is being opposed exactly? Are some feminisms more vulnerable to opposition? Are some measures and policies more contested than others? Or more opposed by specific actors? Are any particular persons targeted by this opposition, and if so, why? And are some forms and types of opposition potentially more successful than others? Can opposition maybe also foster greater feminist strength? In this book, we thus intend not just to address the specifics of how opposition functions in our current times, but we will also take on more theoretical challenges to understand what are the most productive ways in which we can theorize opposition, this also in order to be better equipped to analyze the actors, strategies, and dynamics of opposition.

In order to further articulate these questions and contribute answers, this book will present a more precise conceptualization of opposition and oppositional dynamics, revealing which actors can be active, which have been observed to be dominant where, and what the structural features are that strengthen or foster oppositional dynamics. It will pinpoint the current shortcomings in scholarship on feminist politics and gender+ equality policies, and highlight which existing or emerging scholarship has the potential to contribute to studying oppositional dynamics to feminist politics and gender+ equality policies. In its conclusions, this book will present ideas about how to more fully understand the positive and negative dynamics of gender+ equality change.

In this first chapter, the focus is on defining the problem at stake, both in its scholarly and political dimensions. This means defining what we understand as “opposition to gender-equality change”; figuring what out the problem is with opposition to feminist politics and gender+ equality policies in Europe; improving our scholarship so as to contribute to a feminist politics that has effective strategies, tools, and techniques to engage with, and address, such oppositions. This chapter ends with a brief description of the following chapters and their place in this ambition.

What Is Opposition to Feminist Politics and Gender+ Equality?

For the purposes of this book, opposition to gender+ equality will be defined as any activity in which a perspective opposing feminist politics and gender+ equality policy is articulated in a way that can be expected to influence or is actually influencing politics or policymaking at any stage.

Defining it like this—rather than, for instance, merely as any social movement explicitly opposing gender-equality—involves making key choices about the visibility of opposition, about what is gender, about the location of opposition in political and policy processes, and about its potential impact. To see opposition as an activity means focusing on what is done by actors, not on what is caused by abstract structures. The theoretical reason for this is that structures can only be the cause of anything if they lead to actors’ actual engagement or activities in a certain direction (or to the absence thereof). Moreover, to see it as an activity in which a perspective opposing feminist politics or gender+ equality policies is articulated means seeing opposition as not only intentional—since such articulation can very well be a side-effect of other dominant intentions—but restricting our understanding of opposition to those activities that can be found or analyzed to oppose an element (or multiple elements) of feminist politics or gender+ equality policies, a feature that is necessary to enable solid empirical research. Going beyond gender+ equality, whether as a normative value or as an existing state of reality, this definition describes what is being opposed as feminist politics and gender+ equality policies, a more dynamic focus that includes what is affecting and what is potentially changing gender+ equality outcomes. The choice to name both politics and policies is also deliberate, highlighting that it is not only policymaking that brings forward societal change but also feminist politics more broadly, as it includes actors from movements, political parties, and social and political institutions, as well as bureaucrats, scholars, and individual citizens. It would therefore be a mistake to restrict relevant opposition to only those activities that directly oppose bureaucratic or legislative proposals for instance, excluding oppositional activities that articulate a broader intention to hinder feminist politics or a more far-reaching ideology against feminist objectives. The choice to use gender+ as a label for the policies flags the importance of paying attention to the intersectional inequalities that are interwoven with gender inequality, and this intersectional understanding extends to the understanding of feminist politics as necessarily intertwined and engaged with other structural inequalities shaping gender inequality. The phrase “articulated in a way that either can be expected to influence or is actually influencing” is included to focus on what matters most and enable theorizing on which kinds of opposition could potentially be successful. To understand the potential influence of any given opposition, it is important to comprehend feminist politics and gender+ equality policies as interventions in specific societies. Even in the context of Europe, this means vast differences in the actual ongoing gender+ inequalities and the political and policymaking opportunities and legacies. Contextuality needs to be part of theorizing because the potential impact of oppositional activities depends on the social, political, and historical context. Given that feminist politics is politics and gender+ equality policies are a form of policy, what happens to feminist politics and gender+ equality policies will always be subject to the usual dynamics of political and policy processes. That is why the last part of the definition, “politics or policymaking at any stage”, stresses that opposition to feminist politics and gender+ equality policies can appear at each stage of these processes, in the agenda-setting stage as well as in the development, improvement, implementation, or evaluation stages—the type of actors that can be expected to be active differs depending on the stage under consideration (e.g. lobbyist in the policy-development stage, street-level bureaucrats in the implementation stage), and the type of opposition that occurs can be expected to vary across stages too. This book is intended to explore just such issues, such as which relevant actors or forms of opposition are linked to specific policy stages, in order to improve our understanding of the dynamics of gender+ equality change.

Why Study Opposition to Feminist Politics and Gender+ Equality in Europe Today?

As noted earlier, there are two reasons to study opposition to gender+ equality change in Europe:¹ there is a strong political drive related to worrying current developments in Europe and another more academic drive to push forward existing scholarship.

Looking at current developments in Europe and the more visible opposition in recent years, it is important to realize that opposition to gender+ equality change is not new at all. From a historical perspective, opposition to gender+ equality change can be found from the earliest days of feminism in Europe, as is testified by the long delays in changing laws that were exposed as gender unequal early on or in rectifying legislation and regulations that had a detrimental impact on women’s lives. Examples abound: Olympe de Gouges’ advocacy for women’s rights and social justice (she was also a strong advocate against slavery) in the context of the French Revolution that is said to have signaled the start of European democracy was effectively silenced through her death by guillotine in 1793 (Scott 1992). It took the Netherlands 20 years to make marital rape a legal “possibility”, only concluding the political struggle in 1992 after its first emergence on the political agenda in 1972 (Roggeband 2002). Ireland still does not have a law that gives women access to legal abortion because decades of feminist struggles have not been able to counter the ongoing opposition, while in other countries where abortion is a legal option, access to it is problematic because of a lack of facilities or because of opt-out possibilities for medical personnel (Githens and McBride Stetson 2013). There are also various obstruction methods, including violence (Krook 2016), hindering countries’ compliance with legally adopted quota regulations, resulting in impotent quotas that cannot increase the share of elected women.

The historical nature of opposition to feminist politics shows that, as is often the case with “new” topics in academia, it is not so much the social phenomenon in itself that is new, but the academic attention to the phenomenon (Verloo 2001). The new or renewed attention to opposition to feminist politics, however, is also based on broader and increasing political worries about the decline of general political opportunities favorable to social justice, such as the substantial destruction of the welfare state and the changing landscape of politics and democracy in Europe (Merkel 2014). Recent scholarship has three main axes of attention regarding the current political dangers and challenges i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Part 1 Conceptualizing Opposition and Oppositional Dynamics
• Part 2 Varieties of Opposition to Gender+ Equality in Europe
• Part 3 Conclusions and Discussion: A Framework for Understanding Oppositional Dynamics on Gender-Equality Change and Possible Actions Against Opposition
• Index